New Pool Owner. Help!

Hi all. I have a 14 chapter on my torid history with this pool since it was opened in June but I will save that for a later date. I need help know. I have a steel pool with vinal liner. 24,600g. Cart filter. Normal chlorine pool. We bought this house last june and the pool was open so the pool co that was caring for it told us to use the 3" chlorine biscuts and shock once a week. Nothing about testing. This year we opened it and there was baskets full of leafs, bugs and who knows what. We ended up having a local co come and clean it. Short of the long we spent much on nothing. I am a salt water fish guy and belong to a forum which got me through alot. So I looked this site up. Sorry, got off the subject. I bought the Taylor K-6000 test kit and these are my readings:
Day one: 9:00 a.m.
pH 7.2
ALK 40
CAL 160
2nd Test same day(i needed to make sure I was doing test right) 3:13 p.m.
pH: 7.2
ALK 100
CAL 200
The next day I wanted to run the TC/FC and i was doing the test that required the power dippers. I took a sample and I could not get the water to turn pink. I was up to 13 dippers and decided to stop cause I had no idea what was going on. I did test the cyn acid and it was at/around 110. The pool was green then started to clear up and know it looks milky/cloudy. I wana use the BBB method and I have all the chemicals. I live in southern Minnesota and I have already been turned off by the pool co around here. Can some one please tell me what to do? I have a party that was planned for Sunday and they are all looking forward to swimming. Thanks all for your advice.
Lewis

Hi Lewis and welcome to the Pool Forum. First of all, I want to thank you for becoming a Lifetime Member! That is awesome and we are glad to have you!

If you never got the sample to turn pink, then you have no chlorine. Not a good thing! You need to get some chlorine in there ASAP! However, before we talk about that, I want to talk about CYA first.

If your CYA is over 100, that is really high. In fact, I'm not sure how you came up with a reading of 110 since the tester only shows to 100. The culprit is those trichlor tabs you used. They are fine to use for awhile, but using them for too long causes too much CYA to be added to the pool. People don't realize that when your CYA is high, you have to use higher than normal chlorine levels or your pool will turn green. (Take a look at the Best Guess chart in my signature below for more about that.)

You basically have two options.

1. Do a partial drain and refill to try and get the CYA down to a lower, more manageable level. Do NOT totally drain your pool however, or you will destroy your liner.

OR

2. Keep the high CYA and just run higher chlorine levels per the Best Guess chart to compensate.

Either way will work. But, either way, no more trichor pucks for this pool or dichlor powdered shock either. Those are both stabilized forms of chlorine which means they have CYA in them. (They are also very acidic and drive pH down.)

Let us know which option you prefer and then someone here can give you next steps.

Again, welcome!

EDIT -- Also, when you repost, tell us exactly what all your pool company added if you know. If you can tell us ingredients, it would help us to better advise you.

Thanks for the reply. I would rather keep they CYA high. The reason I put down 110 for the CYA was it looked like it would be 110. So it went past 100 and I guessed. Like I said in my first post, there is a long story behind this and know Im starting to understand things better. The pool co kept telling me to add more chlorine so I kept putting in the tabs. ALOT. Then she said oh, I meant liquid chlorine. I had never heard of that. So I would like to stay away from draining it. He is what they have done so far: I know this because they just left the empty bottles all over the pool area every time they left so I stuck them in recycle dumpster. Here goes:
SoWhite Pool Clear: Sodium Hypo-12.5%.. 16 Jugs @ 128fl oz per jug
AquaChem Sod Hypo 10%.. 6 jugs @ 1Gal per Jug
Clorox: 10 Jugs @ 1.42Gal per jug
OnGuard pH Rise..9lbs
Natural Chemistry Metal Free 33.9fl oz
" " Pool Magic + Phos Free 53.9fl oz
OnGuard Chl Stabelizer 4Lbs
Pro Team 3" High Tech Tabs 25Lbs(this was the tabs we were using when she said use chlorine. Used the whold bucket in a week or two)
" " Multi Magic Shock 1 1/2 Lbs weekly
That should be it. I stoped everything so I have not put anything in it or let the pool co do anything. Right know the pool is blue milky color and there are stains on the liner. I will wait on your advice. Thanks all. I hope I can have my pool party on Sunday....Lewis

Hi Lewis, welcome and thanks for the lifetime mem.
It might not be a bad idea to drain off half your pool and refill...because they put a lot of useless junk in that may WELL make it more difficult to clear your pool...I don't know.
Or you can go simple and hammer it with bleach. You CAN use Cal-Hypo but you have to watch the CH level and stop when it hits 400. Only use Cal-hypo that's 60% or higher chlorine, if you use it (none of the 48% wal-mart garbage).
But Bleach or Liquid chlorine(LC) is the best way to go. 6% Liquid Chlorine is EXACTLY the same as 6% Ultra Bleach. Exactly.
So? How much?

Well, with your CYA over 100ppm, you need to shock your pool to get your FC up to 25ppm. That's going to take 10 gallons of 6% bleach, and you'll have to keep using it as one gallon will add 2.5ppm of chlorine.
If you use 12.5% LC you'll need 4.8 gallons...might as well empty the entire 5 gallon carboy.
I like the 12.5% in carboys because I use less gallon jugs, less hauling, and the normalized per gallon cost is cheaper (If a gallon of 12.5% is no more than double the price of a gallon of 6%, the chlorine in it is cheaper).

But it doesn't matter. For convenience and cost I prefer the stronger stuff. Other people around the country find it more expensive or harder to come by and use bleach. As long as you use the correct amount it's no different.

Carl

Thanks. So at 10:00 a.m. i put in 10 gal of bleach. It is know 4:00 p.m. when do i re test?

When trying to clear up a pool, the more often you test and raise back up to shock level, the quicker it will clear, so go ahead and test when you can...

Janet

Here is my latest test

6:15 p.m. Sunny
Pool Temp 85
pH 7.2
ALK 120ppm
CAL 210ppm(question, its not a blue but more purple. Do I keep going til its blue?)
FC 0.6ppm
CC 0.8ppm
Thanks all for your support and advice...Lewis

You need to get the chlorine back up to 25 ppm...if it keeps yo-yoing up and down, the pool is not going to clear. Regarding the calcium, you keep adding drops until the last drop you added does not make a color change.

Janet

A little confused. Would that be FC or CC or do i ad the two to get a total number? Also is it swimable or should i keep people out til it gets better? Thanks...

Your shock level will be FC but some of it will quickly become CC as the chlorine is fighting algae. I'd keep people out for now while you are shocking and the water is cloudy. Having said that, shock level won't hurt people but may damage swimwear, so if you do decide to swim, wear old suits.

Like Jan said, the more often you can test and take the chlorine back up to 25, the faster this is gonna clear. There is no such thing as testing and dosing too often. Every couple of hours is fine, won't hurt a thing and will clear it faster.

So i tested the FC and CC and i got this
FC- 4.6
CC- 0.4
For FC it is 0.2 X 23 drops = 4.6 so that number needs to be 25?
this is why i paid for lifetime membership. Lol...Lewis

Yep. You got it. It needs to be taken up to 25ppm. By the way, just use the 10ml sample for your tests. It will give you within 0.5ppm accuracy which is plenty good enough and it will make your reagents last longer.

Thank you. Will bringing that up to 25 help with the stains in the liner? Last fall we paid the pool co over 400.00 to close pool and 300.00 to open this spring and i was not here in the fall and they did not clean it. I spent days dragging out leaves, bugs, and unidentified things out of the pool which i believe left stains. This pool was beautiful until they closed it.

Time will tell if it will take care of the stains.

Vinyl pool? Forget calcium! Don't bother testing it again unless you are adding calcium (a waste of money) or Cal-Hypo--a chlorine chem that adds calcium.

Carl